answer her as you would answer Leslie Goldthwaite if you were coming home
from berrying. Don't you count those pearls that the Empress has tied
round her head, nor think how you can make a necktie like hers out of that
old bit of ribbon that you bought in Syracuse. Tell her, in as good French
or as good English as you can muster, what she asks; and if, after you
have answered her lead, she plays again, do you play again; and if she
plays again, do you play again,--till one or other of you takes the trick.
But do you think of nothing else, while the talk goes on, but the subject
she has started, and of her; do not think of yourself, but address
yourself to the single business of meeting her inquiry as well as you can.
Then, if it becomes proper for you to ask her a question, you may. But
remember that conversation is what you are there for,--not the study of
millinery, or fashion, or jewelry, or politics.

Why, I have known men who, while they were smirking, and smiling, and
telling other lies to their partners, were keeping the calendar of the
whole room,--knew who was dancing with whom, and who was looking at
pictures, and that Brown had sent up to the lady of the house to tell her
that supper was served, and that she was just looking for her husband that
he might offer Mrs. Grant his arm and take her down stairs. But do you
think their partners liked to be treated so? Do you think their partners
were worms, who liked to be trampled upon? Do you think they were
pachydermatous coleoptera of the dor tribe, who had just fallen from
red-oak trees, and did not know that they were trampled upon? You are
wholly mistaken. Those partners were of flesh and blood, like you,--of the
same blood with you, cousins-german of yours on the Anglo-Saxon side,--and
they felt just as badly as you would feel if anybody talked to you while
he was thinking of the other side of the room.

And I know a man who is, it is true, one of the most noble and unselfish